Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, for giving us the chance to appear in front of you today to speak about Arctic sovereignty.
I am from Kuujjuaq, a town in Nunavik, but I grew up with the federal day school system, so my French isn't that good. It pre-dated the provincial school system, so I will need the help of the translator.
Makivik is the organization mandated to protect the rights and interests of the Nunavik Inuit under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and under the 2008 Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement, which is known as NILCA. That is an agreement between the Canadian government, the Nunavut government, and the Inuit of Nunavik and Labrador, which provides Nunavik Inuit with ownership of approximately 7,000 offshore islands in Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, and Ungava Bay.
As you can gather just by hearing that we have over 7,000 islands, Nunavik is a very large place. In fact, after Nunavut, Nunavik is the second largest Inuit territory in Canada in terms of both geography and population. Inuit constitute the overwhelming majority of the region's population. Our shoreline is over 17,000 kilometres, and Nunavik's land mass covers 660,000 square kilometres, or approximately the top one-third of Quebec.
Nunavik is part of the Canadian Arctic. It has predominantly an Arctic landscape. A large portion of its territory lies above the tree line, and seven of the fourteen communities are actually located north of the 60th parallel. We are isolated. There are no roads connecting any of our communities to the main grid. The Hudson Strait, which provides waterway access to the heart of the Canadian Arctic, flows right by our shores. These facts are particularly noteworthy given that the federal government appears to have decided to exclude Nunavik from its northern strategy.
We are not second-class Inuit. Nunavik's exclusion from the northern strategy is based on artificial boundaries, not geographical or social ones. We are Inuit, just like our cousins in Nunavut, and we want the Canadian government to recognize this simple reality, in the same way it recognized Quebec as a nation. We request that the Canadian government clearly acknowledge that the northern strategy applies to Nunavik to the same extent as to other regions in Canada's Arctic.
As for the issue of assertion of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, we feel that the federal government seems to have relegated this objective to the establishment of a military presence in the north. In this context, if we were to be asked whether we think that National Defence currently has the capacity to adequately provide for our security and protection in the north, our short answer is no.
I'll bring up a few points to back this up. A good example of it is that the government cannot carry out effective search and rescue operations in our regions, and vessels must operate in an environment where there are no safe anchorages or safe harbours. We would argue that despite its legal claims on its Arctic territory, in many areas the government lacks in a practical sense the means to fully exercise its sovereignty in the Arctic.
This problem becomes even more acute because Canada is faced with increasing pressure to open up the Northwest Passage. Ships will eventually go through, one way or another. There is already a critical need for additional marine infrastructure and services, and this will increase significantly in the coming years.
On a positive note, Canada's response to this situation can provide significant opportunities for northern residents and pave the way for new partnerships between governments and Inuit organizations such as Makivik. With NILCA, we have already proven our capacity to negotiate win-win agreements with our neighbours and governments.
Our shores and many of our airports are unprotected. Anybody can land by sea in Nunavik and remain undetected for long periods of time. If they were to be detected, it would most probably be by a hunter or a ranger patrol.
Another point relates to the Canadian government's being unable to carry out effective search and rescue missions in the North. It usually takes as much as five days for CFB Trenton and the rangers' base operations in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to authorize a search party of the rangers. When a resident is lost in the north, a community will not wait that long to start a search. If a resident is lost at sea, people in the community have access to a large community-owned boat, which was funded by Makivik and the Kativik regional government, while the operations are funded by the municipalities.
When authorization is finally given to start search and rescue missions, it is usually the Canadian Rangers who are deployed. We feel that the rangers do a good job, because they quite often resort to regional expertise, such as hunters who know the prevailing winds and the currents. The rangers also have a positive impact on our communities, and we are most appreciative of the services they carry out, and more specifically, the training they provide under the junior rangers program.
Unfortunately for our needs, the rangers are under-equipped. They have no snowmobiles, four-wheelers, or boats that can be used in search and rescue missions. The rangers have to use their own machines to go searching.
Another point is that there is a serious lack of safe anchorages in Nunavik. Cargo volumes and vessel sizes are both increasing. The result is that ships have to anchor further and further out. This is a situation that increasingly exposes them to poor weather and dangerous conditions. This problem has to be resolved, because our northern communities depend on organizations such as Makivik and shipping subsidiaries of Makivik such as NEAS to deliver goods.
There is also a growing number of cruise ships in the north. In fact, another subsidiary of Makivik is Cruise North Expeditions. It brought about 800 tourists to the north this summer. Should an accident on one of these cruise ships ever arise, we feel that effective and speedy rescue missions could not be carried out. This would most certainly have an adverse affect on Canada's northern tourism as a whole, since our ships visit both Nunavik and Nunavut.
At present, we need suitable ports, harbours, and terminals, along with more navigational aids and marine mobile communication services. Our waters are uncharted, for the most part, and so we need hydrographic charts to map our uncharted waters. Makivik Corporation operates a new subsidiary that provides some of these services to northern residents and government departments, and if there were any money to be put toward more hydrographic charts, we'd be able to provide some of those services.
As a result of the federal-provincial program, Nunavik's 14 communities now benefit from basic marine infrastructure designed to protect fishermen from the perils of the sea. We are most grateful for the contributions we have received and the positive impact they have had on the local economy and the safety of our residents and hunters. We'd like to point out that Makivik's construction division built every one of those 14 marine infrastructures.
The time is right for an opportunity to work on the construction of a deep-sea port. If such a deep-sea port were built in Nunavik it would allow the Department of National Defence to carry out military missions from Nunavik. It would also create significant economic opportunities for our region and help decrease the high cost of living.
We feel that infrastructure projects of this type in the north have been evaluated in terms of how they will enhance Canada's Arctic sovereignty, and not simply on the basis of their commercial feasibility, as would be the case in the south. Arctic sovereignty must be defined in more operational terms. It needs to be carried out with the help of government programs designed to meet the changing northern realities, and delivered in partnership with regional organizations.
Arctic sovereignty along with the northern strategy should be designed to allow northern regions, including Nunavik, to partner with the Government of Canada in meeting its military and socio-economic development opportunities.
Thank you very much.
I guess I worked myself into a sweat presenting this to you.
